Suggestions

The New Tree Version

We now have a list of pages.

I have 75 pages.

Would it not be easier to have this listed alphabetically?

I could then go to A for Alan, or Z for Zoe, instead of looking at pages 35, 36, 37, 38 etc etc looking for Margaret.

K I S S !!!!!!

Scozz,

I don't understand what you mean.

What list of pages are you talking about?

Gai

Scozz, Not sure what list you refer to, Did you use the facility to infirm GR about this problem

Roy

When you are looking at YOUR tree ~ there is a list of the OTHER trees you have access to.

I have a block, from 1 - 75, so I have 75 pages of Other Trees.

I thought it would be simpler to have A B C D E F etc, rather than 75 pages. I've been a member for 7 years, and have contact with (obviously!) many other people. An Alphabetical list would make it much easier to find people, eg I don't know if Joseph Somebody would be on page 5, 6, 7 or whatever, but he would be on J.

I haven't asked GR - figure I'd get a generic answer, or an answer that has nothing to do with my question, or they would say "We'll look into iot". As usual.

They haven't taken any notice of any of my suggestions.

Scozz, GR have said that although they will not be able to reply to "all members" because of the amount of mail they are receiving concerning these changes then i would initially give the the benefit of any doubt's you have and give them a little time to sort these problems out,

I no they have had time to sort some of these long standing problems out in the past and they have appeared to be doing nothing about them but on this occasion they have been very active responding on threads and if you look at some problems that have been highlighted since the launch of the beta site and the replies from GR they do appear to be taking things seriously now.

Either we want these problems sorting out or we just want to continue to complain about them.

For their to be any chance of getting GR to fix the problems then we all need to do our best to help by sending as much feedback as possible using the link's provided,

If their is a problem with one of the link's or email addresses for GR then simply use one of their other email addresses that does work

Regarding your problem with the list, My list does appear in alphabetical order


Roy

It is usual practice with software to run a beta test which includes trying out the new version with existing users. "TheTeam" appear to have only the most tenuous of ideas on both software development and customer relationships. The only discernable improvement is that messages to theteam (new beta) or support get a template bromide sooner than before. So no suprise that beefs get posted here then.

Scozzi makes the blindingly obvious point that the list of shared trees should be indexed alphabetically rather than numbered. That the list is itself in alphabetical order is irrelevant as right now you just have to guess the page number for John Smith for instance. Imagine you have a dictionary, gazateer or phone book and it was accessed by number! At a guess this got through as internal testing had only a few shared trees. It is also easier to code. As ever the old version was fine.

The standard sub now appears to be £ 8 / 6 months plus a promise, never fulfilled, of 50 "free credits". Whether that plus ads plus the platinum members is a viable proposition we shall see over the next few months. There is now quite a large gap between GRU Platinum and basic UK Ancestry and a yawning gap in quality. "Yer pays yer money and yet takes yer choice". If GRU was a car I guess it would at best be a Yugo (remember them?).

I have checked the tree dashboard which shows the trees that I have access to and it's in alphabetical order by the tree owners name.

I also notice that there is page keeping software as part of the dashboard which will be a help to some.

Gai

My List on the "Tree dashboard" is in alphabetical order

However the list of descendants is listed in the same order as would be in your actual tree

Roy

For goodness sake there are none so blind as the seeing.

Scozzi is talking about the option "View other trees" which is at the top of the tree view page. It brings up a dialog which is now called "Tree dashboard".

Sure the list is in alphabetical order. However when you select it the list is given as page 1, page 2 etc not A, B, C. If you have only a few shared trees not a problem but if you have a lot a real hassle. Say you are looking for "Reginald Brown" then it could be page 2, page 10 or whatever. Nuts. Have you ever seen a telephone directory or gazatteer accessed in such a way?

The owner of a tree can now rename it. If it is shared than the person sharing will not have a clue how to find it again via the "Dashboard" unless the owner informs him of the new name. Terrific.

That a simple list menu now has the grandiose title of "Tree dashboard" suggest that "TheTeam" are cooking up further stunts rather than getting the darn thing working properly. What was that tale about leopards and spots?

I for one sure hope that Scozzi stays around. The bald truth in a nuthouse was never popular, stay with it Scozzi!

OK so you would prefer the Page numbers on the Tree dashboard to be relevant to the name of the person who's tree you want to look at so instead of having Mr Smith on page 10 he is listed under the page reference/number "S"

That's fine but as you say If Mr Smith decides to rename his tree it would be irrelevant whether they were in alphabetical or number order


Roy

Thyankyou Rollo! you actually read my post! :-D

What I mean is -

1 look at YOUR tree
2 on the "dashboard" (hoohaa!) you have a list of OTHER PEOPLE'S TREES

Do you have a list of names?

I do not have a list of names.

I have a block like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75

Where do you suggest I look for a tree owned by a Michael?

That's why I thought having

A B C D E F G H I J
K L M N O P Q R S T
U V W X Y Z

would be easier.

At least I'd know where to begin.

:-D

rofl here Rollo

Just saw your comment on the Yugo car

ha ha ha ha ha

We lived in Belgrade for 2 years (and a bit) working there. That was the standard rental car available. We had cardboard on the floor to stop our feet freezing in winter.

I always carried a HUGE handbag. Cos every time we parked the car we had to take the windscreen wipers with us....... we were warned, but thought it was a joke. Not a very funny joke on a wet night.

Roy - the Other trees are listed alphabetically by FIRST names - until the owner of the tree changes it (why would they?)

Actually I did read your posts but you never made it clear as to just what and where the list you referred to was,

as for

They haven't taken any notice of any of my suggestions

Do you have proof? did they send you confirmation that they would take no notice or your suggestions?

The Tree function on GR is free

If you want an all singing and dancing one then may be it would be better it you found one that suits your need and buy it as most other people do

I used to own a small car when i grew out of it i bought a bigger one that suited my needs, may be i should have gone back to the garage and insisted they provided the bigger one free of charge

Roy

I have changed the the home person and name on my FTM program as a way of splitting the tree on my tree when exporting the gedcom to another family member so they can then be the home person and build the tree from their

Roy

I must be such a simple soul that having my own tree, without having to have access to other people's, is more than enough...I'm not sure why one would want access to lots of trees?...unless one is just interested in everyone however distantly connected....or doing a one name study i suppose. :-D

I hope it gets sorted to everyone's satisfaction though :-D

I thought that Scozz's initial post was crystal clear.

I had a friend in Paris with a Yugo. After a Paris RATP bus flattened it in the sort of jousting that is routine in Paris he got another one which died on the peripherique (Paris ring road aka French wall of death (Barry Wiggins practices there eating frogs)). I took pity and got him a Golf which was very German and boring. Nothing ever fell off, not even the doors. Perhaps Scozz may choose to swap experiences of such lush places as Banja Luka and Grotska. No doubt Scozz will also be pleased to know that the Yugo plant was precision bombed by the USAAF. Anyway I digress.

Given that even for Scozz the number of shared trees is under 100 the present dialog is poorly designed. It has two actions when only one is needed.

Far better would be a standard list box with scrolling after about 10-20 entries. This type of dialog typically has also a text entry option as well and the choice moves down the box as u enter more letters. Code for this has been around for > 30 yrs and def bef 2000 in javascript .. fwiw the "tree dashboard" is far too big anyway.

Do GRU realise that dialogs, fonts, etc etc can be autoscaled for the current user rather than hard coded? Have they ever heard of user metrics? Different designs are tested for usability i.e. time to complete and error rate. Real world software as opposed to toy apps such as GRU care a helluva lot about such things.

One of the huge problems of GRU is that the same people do both the UI design and the coding - always a path to something half baked and half working. The "testers" are for the most part the marketing dept so they just cheer things along.

Any real world corporate IT developer who took such an approach would be out on his ear in short order getting the sharp end of somebody's Loakes all the way from Shoreditch to Wapping Wall. I suppose an organisation better known for the People's Friend, the Beano and Wee Eck it would be unfair to expect better.

Whether GRU choose to offer parts of their product foc is neither here nor there. Both Scozz and y.t. pay.

OTOH as the std membership is cheap as chips (and cheaper than milk) one may as well feel better and pay to use the bits which work and are, as Roy points out, free. For instance the excellent census indexes are very useful and not so plagued with typos as Ancestry.. Given time I expect PM and his gang will get around to "improving" them so they can be efficiently maintained .....

Near enough is not good enough and it never will be.